TEAM HERALD
As the State unit of the grand old party licks its wounds after yet another drubbing, a micro analysis of the election results showed that Congress made absolutely no headway in this election even though it was fighting a political novice in Sidharth Kuncalienker.
The detailed results indicate that despite Defence minister Manohar Parrikar not being a candidate his shadow still falls over Panjim. After quitting his membership of the State Legislative Assembly, Parrikar has said he would defend the constituency, he has successfully done it. For, barring a couple of booths – to be more precise booths in wards represented by the 2012 Congress candidate and the present one – the rest of the results in all the booths have remained the same when compared with the results of 2012.
If the Congress obtained a minor lead in Miramar this time, the party had put up a good show in the Pharmacy College booth in 2012. That booth – Pharmacy College – is where electors from the ward represented by 2012 Congress candidate Yatin Parekh vote.
In effect the result proved that the Congress has been selecting candidates who are ward heroes but have no exposure or draw no sympathy in the constituency as a whole and have had to rely solely on the traditional Congress votes to make up the numbers.
The only booth in Panjim that has been consistently standing by the Congress has been the St Tome area with the Mary Immaculate School booth this time giving the Congress an even bigger number of votes than it gave the Congress in 2012.
A look at the results in the last three elections shows that not much has changed for the Congress. In 2012, Parekh had polled 5018 votes. In the 2014 Lok Sabha election, where the Congress campaign was almost non-existent in Panjim, Ravi Naik had polled 4529 votes. In this by-poll, Furtado who visited houses across the constituency got 4621 votes, which is just 92 votes more than what Naik obtained in 2014. What this in effect means is that Congress has a vote share of around 4500 votes in Panjim that it can depend on with the candidate unable to draw more than that.
In contrast, the BJP had polled 9785 votes in the Lok Sabha election and this time Kuncalienker managed to get 9989 votes, about 200 more than the 2014 Parliamentary election figure. Parrikar, on the other hand, had polled 11,086 votes in the 2012 assembly elections.
The victory margins have also remained more or less consistent with Kuncalienker winning by 5368 votes, while Parrikar had won by over 6000 votes.
The voting pattern, and the consistency in votes, throws up the question of whether St Cruz MLA Monserrate’s open declaration of working against the Congress candidate made any difference in the votes polled. The votes don’t show much of a shift away from the Congress.
While much was expected from independent candidate Samir Kelekar, he hardly made a dent polling just 624 votes while the other independent Sadanand Vaingankar sank without a trace polling 140 odd votes.
While the BJP is sitting pretty knowing that its vote base has not shifted, it is the Congress that has to pull up its socks. The normally risk-averse party will have to do something sensational to remain relevant when elections are called in 2017.
